


In the years of siege to come

by lilith_morgana



Series: Our endless numbered days [1]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-18
Updated: 2014-11-02
Packaged: 2018-02-21 16:37:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2475032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilith_morgana/pseuds/lilith_morgana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What came after the world, when it ended. </p><p>Assorted chronological stories, vignettes, character studies & adventures. Set during and after DA2, in anticipation of DA:I.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Thaw

**Author's Note:**

> Assorted chronological stories, vignettes, character studies and adventures set during and after DA2, in anticipation of DA:I. Features Hawke, Bethany, Blackwall, Isabela, Elissa, Loghain, Trevelyan and a few others. Compatible with my previous DA fics, for those who care about that.

_We, the living dead of Troy, shall pay his debt in the years of siege to come_  
(the movie 'helen of troy')

.  
.

* * *

**9:32 Dragon**   
_The Free Marches_

.

* * *

 

Blackwall blames Ferelden.

Perhaps that is unfair and it's most definitely  _unsound_  as far as strategies go, but here and now, holding off a straggling horde of darkspawn intent on storming a village so full of Fereldan refugees that it's about to burst out of its own borders, he allows himself a moment of blaming the nation that trapped its own people inside a raging war rather than accepting outside help.

It seems long ago now that he was sent away from the Fereldan border before he even got there, long ago since he learned that self-appointed regent Loghain Mac Tir had ordered his troops to attack Grey Wardens on sight and - to make matters even more dire - kill any Orlesian chevalier sent to aid with the Blight. The blind conceit in that still lingers at the back of his mind, making his sword hit a little bit harder as he beheads two genlocks.

Val Chevin has seen its fair share of starved refugees since but he knows the Free Marches had been welcoming the vast majority. If 'welcomed' is the word for it, he thinks darkly. The most likely translation would be 'left to fight amongst themselves outside the city walls' and that thought fuels his blade once more.

It can hardly be called a battle, what they are doing here, but it's good practice at least.

Behind him there are four new recruits, a bit further ahead his Senior Warden Duma leads the rest of their group. He also spots a familiar shape coming out of the nearby tavern - Warden-Constable Stroud, accompanied by a young woman who quickly reveals herself as a mage.

It seems the Thaw hunt really do bring them all to the same places, circulating like scavengers around one measly corpse. Except of course for the fact that the numbers of their enemies are seemingly endless, hunt or not.

Once the attackers have been dealt with, Blackwall gives the order that they are to stop for the night, make camp.

"Burn the bodies, see that this is cleaned up," he orders Emile – a scrawny Orlesian archer who had begged him to let him join on the streets of Val Chevin and while he doesn't often bring people along out pity, he allows himself to make exceptions. There's an urgency in the boy, a promise of something  _devoted_  and Maker knows they could do with a bit more devotion.

As he walks towards the village Blackwall looks for Stroud, but the man seems to have disappeared among the battered buildings and the narrow streets between them. Probably seeking something or seeing to an escaped darkspawn's death – Stroud usually works alone, his reputation for solitude unmatched even by someone like Blackwall.

"Well done, Duma." He nods at the dwarf who's kneeling beside her pack, wiping the remains of battle off her daggers; at the sight of him she looks up, grinning.

"Still one ogre ahead of you, Constable."

"I'll get there."

Inside, people are still drinking their ale as if nothing had happened outside. There's a sense of exhaustion after a war, he's learned, a layer of resignation among everyone who has been unfortunate enough to see too much fighting and death. After a certain point you cannot bring yourself to care; you remain where you are, turn the other cheek and complain about the bad crop this fall or them bloody refugees crowding your land. It sends a jolt of irritation to his chest, but Blackwall is old enough to know better, to let it become a thought instead of a sentiment. And in his mind he understands the men by the fireplace, can almost taste their heartbroken indifference in the air.

"I'm afraid we're all out of beds, Warden." The woman behind the bar gives him an apologetic glance when he makes his way across the room to talk to her. He can trace the faintest hint of fear behind the firm green gaze. The Blight is still fresh, trust is expensive and standing unarmed in front of someone of his build who is carrying a bloodied longsword can make the staunchest person somewhat nervous. It's a notion he tries to keep alive to himself.

Blackwall nods. "We sleep outside the village then. If you have a meal and some ale, we would be grateful."

"Of course."

His own Warden-Commander back in the days when he first joined had claimed Thedas owed Wardens for their never-ending duty, thus often neglecting to pay for rooms and services.  _We give our lives_ , she had said and cocked her head in her arrogant manner which he had found both remarkably infuriating and remarkably attractive, in that strange flurry of sentiments that would always surround his idea of her.

Blackwall plants a pouch of coin in the woman's hand before walking out to tell his men to gather inside.

A brief moment later the tavern is as crowded as the village itself, made up from floor planks to roof of loud wardens in various states of relaxation – most of them have shed their armour but keeps their weapons at hand and they glitter in the warm light from lamps and fire. Everyone take their supper greedily and obliviously for a good while and he makes a mental note to himself to add more coin to what he's already paid. It seems like a night for it.

The Thaw eats away at them. During the Blight he could feel his own infection burn in his throat, like a hunger, a song of fury and fight. When it ended, that song had gone quiet, leaving nothing but tiredness in its wake. One of the older wardens had told him it was a good thing, claimed they age too fast among the darkspawn, heading for the Deep Roads too soon.  _This is the shortest Blight Thedas has ever seen, lad, you should live to see that hair of yours turn whiter than mine._ Blackwall fears neither death nor the Deep Roads but he fears exhaustion and inaction and part of him misses the raging wars of last year.

That's not something he freely admits, especially not in a room full of new wardens.

He's had two servings of the stew and one large chunk of pork before he notices Stroud again. It seems he's working, not bothered by the noisy wardens or the mage by his side – she on the other hand, looks out at the crowd and Blackwall tries to read her expression but it's too closed, guarded.

Blackwall nurses no illusions of himself as a champion of socialising these days but he's not Stroud and never will be no matter how many years he spends on the roads and in the battlefields. With a look over at the nearby table where Hannah, his most enthusiastic Senior Warden enteratins a group of new wardens, he takes a seat opposite Stroud and the mage.

"You reek of battle." Stroud doesn't look up from his writing.

The corners of Blackwall's mouth twitch. "I get that a lot."

The mage smiles, almost despite herself. She looks worn-out to the point of breaking, however, and no smile can change that.

"You fight well," he says, willing his voice to come off as gentle as it possibly can.

"I... no, I don't."

Mages tend to look misplaced in large groups of wardens, regardless of how many of them that make it into the ranks. Among the burly men and broad-shouldered women a mage will stand out and this one does, rather spectacularly at that. She doesn't look like someone who ought to be sleeping in a ditch, covered in mud and blood; she looks like someone who should be safe and sound in a nice home somewhere, surrounded by children.

"That so?" Blackwall leans back in his seat, helps himself to some ale. "The hurlocks disagree with you, I'd wager."

She seems intent on letting his encouragement pass uncommented. "My sister is the fighter of the family," she replies, simply.

"Is your sister a Warden too, then?"

"No." Her tone is flat now. "It's just me."

 _It's just me._ He wonders how long she's been a warden for those family bonds to still be so raw. Wonders, too, if she's as young as she appears or if inexperience and lingering shock renders her more childish. He has half a mind to tell his fellow Warden-Constable a thing or two about recruiting wide-eyed children. Their order has scant room for nursemaids and even less for kids too scared to join the battle when it comes. Then he thinks about Emile and sighs inwardly. Blighted principles are always blurred by something – a face you think you know from somewhere, a word that reminds you of someone, a prayer convincing enough to be mistaken for truth. He can hardly fault Stroud for  _that_.

"Bethany joined us in the Deep Roads," Stroud says, as if on cue. He meets Blackwall's gaze over the pile of letters and mugs of ale and Blackwall thinks he almost knows how it happened, down there among the ancient stones and lack of fresh air.

Becoming a Grey Warden is not one story; they form a pattern of a thousand different tales.

Back when he joined - willingly, half-desperate with ideals and lack of other options - the Free Marchers that took him with them had made a point of scaring all new recruits witless during their first days after the Joining. Blackwall had been sent into the wilds to fetch some pointless herbs only to find himself trapped in a glen where three bears awaited him. The Senior Wardens had tended to his injuries afterwards, complimented him on his endurance and all he had thought was that he would never trust their command again.

In a war with so little rewarding glory as the one they constantly wage against the darkspawn he'd rather see solidarity than inane pranks, unity instead of hierarchy. If not for ideals then at the very least because terrified little cowards fight worse and whine more and it wears down his patience.

A warden is a promise and promises needs to be renewed or they'll fade away.

"Fereldan, eh?" He looks at the mage again.

"We fled to Kirkwall when the Blight came." It is as though she speaks without thinking about it, Blackwall thinks, as though she merely let the words out but pay no attention to them. As though she's somewhere else in her mind.

"You have seen some horrors then. Even before the Joining."

Perhaps it's the sincerity in his voice – no pretences there, he's grateful that battle hasn't hardened him entirely – that makes her blink, suddenly, then allow for something in her face to shift.

She inhales deeply and lets her breath out in ragged gasps, turning away slightly from Stroud.

"It hasn't helped." She gives Blackwall a shy glance and Maker help him, he wishes there was something he could say that could remove the past few months from her history. In the end, every soldier gets the hang of the blinding fear and its inherent lack of grace but for some of them the journey there is sheer pain to watch. "I'm so scared. All the time."

Beside her, Stroud sighs and gets to his feet. "I need to finish this work undisturbed. We leave by dawn, Bethany."

Blackwall eyes the other man, wondering what has and has not passed between him and the mage woman. Stroud is a good man. One of the wardens who devote most of their time to various investigations –  _intellectual pursuits_ , some call it with a sneer – and spend fairly little time standing at the front lines. If travelling like Blackwall is lonely, what Stroud does is lonlier by far and he cannot help but think the mage would fare better joining his own group of wardens on their way to Montsimmard. It takes countless of battles with that new, strange warden-constitution before it has settled into your bones – the sooner you go through it, the better.

When he tells her this, her mouth thins then opens slowly.

"Will it remove the horror?" she asks and Blackwall averts his eyes at the openness in her gaze, something in his chest rumbling.

"Nah," he says with a shrug. "Fear is a thing you need to scare away."

"Scare away?" She repeats his words as though they are entirely foreign to her.

"This is where fear gets you, lass." He rolls up the sleeve of his tunic to reveal the thick scar that winds all the way from his wrist to his elbow - and further up around his left shoulder, but he isn't going to show her that. "You stop to be afraid for a moment and they strike."

The mage sits absolutely still, watching.

"When did you stop being afraid?" she asks then, very quietly and under her breath. If it wasn't for the fact that he's looking at her and can see her lips move, he wouldn't have caught it at all.

"I haven't." He takes a swig of his ale, deciding a half-truth is better than nothing tonight. "But I strike first."

.

.  
*  
.  
.  


Dawn rises cold and foggy the following morning, wetting the ground they walk upon. Blackwall gets out of his tent and straightens his back, rubbing out the last soreness from his arms before taking a few steps towards his pack by the fire where Duma is already seated, huddled under a large pelt.

Before he's sat down beside her, he spots Stroud and the mage lead two horses out of the village and raises his hand to greet them.

He likes to think that the mage holds her gaze a little more steady today and if that is merely a weary delusion talking, he decides that he has earned a few of those.


	2. Turn

" _Today I have so much to do:  
__must kill memory once and for all,  
__I must turn my soul to stone,  
__I must learn to live again-"_

― Anna Akhmatova

* * *

**9:33 Dragon**

* * *

 

 **1**.

Stroud doesn't expect her to survive the Joining or what will have to substitute for the Joining when the recruit is half-dead. He can feel the disease singing its low, menacing hum under her skin when he kneels by her side, wondering if he's welcoming her to the order or reciting words to send her off.

But the girl doesn't even blink as she empties the chalice; she looks at him for a long time as though she's about to speak before she falls asleep. She doesn't even  _blink_. All these myths about that chalice and how you endure its contents, he thinks, all the implications it is said to have about your character, your stamina, your very soul. Stroud had cried, he's told. He isn't certain what that is meant to say about him.

"Bad dreams?" he asks the following morning. With the grey-black infectious taint vanished from her face he can tell she's very pale, and very frightened.  _Maker curse that runaway mage for bringing her down here in the first place._

She doesn't answer. Stroud hands her a mug of hot wine and a chunk of cheese and she eats it like a starved animal but there are no  _words_ , not until five days later when they finally reach the surface and the girl looks up at the sky, a faint hint of tears in her eyes.

"Why didn't you let me  _die_?" she asks then and Stroud is the one who doesn't speak.  
  
  
*  
*  
*

The first time she accidentally snapped a twig in two without using her hands, Bethany had screamed. It used to be Carver's favourite story for years, telling everyone how his coward sister had been afraid of a dead tree branch. Then he understood the origin of her fear and the story faded away, never to be replaced.

It had always been a wedge between them, her magic. Her magic and his ordinary palms where no heat could grow unless he rubbed them together, frantically,  _furiously_  when nobody was watching save Bethany who lingered in his shadow because she had a fluttering vision in her chest of his death, his fall that would be  _her_  fall, her  _fault_.

His death that is her fault because she stopped watching.

"Marian," Mother cries out in pain. "How could you let him die! Your little brother!"

Bethany closes her mouth over the protest and watches Marian's face turn to ashes and steel.  
  


* * *

 

 **2**.

Stroud takes her to Montsimmard.

It's a long journey and they undertake it alone, the two of them; he is unused to the company, unsuited for it and feels like an awkward boy in the presence of her quiet grief.  _A knight witnesses many tears_ , someone had said to him once, pointedly. He is not a knight, has no desire to be one.

The life of a Warden grinds away so much, he thinks when she sits by his side in front of the fire. So many things you no longer have use for that vanish like the embers and twigs on the ground in front of them. He wants to be kind to her but he's no longer certain he knows what kind means or if that truly is what she needs.

"It gets easier," he says, by way of compromise.

"Should it?" There's a question surfacing in her voice, the very soft voice that is familiar to him by now, more so than many other things.  _Maker, steer me away from everything to which I may become accustomed._  A warden is not meant to hold on to anything but his ideals.

Stroud watches her poke at some dried leaves, lets his gaze follow their way into the fire.

"Perhaps not. But it does. I have done this for many years and I know _that_."

  
*  
*  
*  
  
When she is ten and Marian almost a woman grown, Bethany understands what it means to be an apostate. They come for a mage in a nearby village, templars moving in the night while Father curses and Mother strokes his back, tells them all long winding tales of creatures long gone and things that never happened.

"But he has a wife," Bethany protests in their bedroom, hiding under the winter-blankets with her head on Marian's arm. "They can't just  _take_  him."

"Mages are not allowed to have wives." Marian lets her free hand run in patterns across Bethany's palm, tracing the lines there. There's a girl in the village who wears Marian's bracelet and Bethany has once read her sister's diary about secret kisses and it strikes her as so unfair now, that Marian will have a family of her own and Bethany will never have anything. "Not in ways that matter, at least."  
  


* * *

  
  
**3**.

The fire lights up the entire landscape around the keep in Montsimmard, long stretches of yellow tearing the dark sky apart. It has not snowed and she is still surprised to find winters without snow -  _Fereldan to the toes_ , Sansha teases - but in the end it's just another change in her long line of them. They hook into each other, twist and bend until they form a shape in the distance that resembles home.

"Bethany," a low voice beside her. When she turns around she sees Sansha's face. "My sympathies."

"Thank you."

She notices Stroud a bit further away, discussing something with a Senior Warden. They both cast square, drawn-out shadows on the ground. It had been Stroud's idea, the funeral wake. Someone told her that as though they were passing on a secret and Bethany had not known what to say, what she is expected to say. She is certain there is some answer somewhere around here, here in the heart of the Order. Everything in these parts can be neatly severed into pieces and placed among the profusion of rules they make for themselves, all the established patterns for living like this.

It is a passable way to live; it is better than being on the run, better than gutting slavers by Marian's side down at the docks or being mistaken for a prostitute outside The Hanged Man.

"Thank you," she says again, later, as she stands mere inches away from Stroud and watches the last flames of their wake die out in silence. "Mother would have liked this."

Stroud nods, simply. He seems tired here, Bethany thinks. Always more tired around the other Wardens, as though they exhaust him with their numbers and voices. Montsimmard makes him trapped behind that serious expression he wears, the mask of steel and duty. Maker, she had hated him in the Deep Roads. Hated that face, those hands, that horrible Orlesian accent as he rattled off eloquent words of sacrifice and she kept thinking he knew nothing of sacrifice, nothing of death, nothing, nothing,  _nothing_.

Now she touches his arm, gently. There's nothing remarkable about that, nothing that cannot fit into the life at the Warden headquarters; it twists in her chest all the same, like a treasure or a secret pain.

*  
*  
*  
  
  
The Hanged Man smells worse than uncle Gamlen's house but Marian doesn't seem to mind or if she minds, she doesn't mind  _enough_  not to rest her head against a disgustingly dirty table and call out for more wine. Isabela, all drunk vulgarities and hands that seem to go  _everywhere_ , has her arm thrown around Marian's waist and on the other side of her Anders sits, not drunk but not sober either. The three of them, positioned like a group of children intent on not letting each other out of sight.

Bethany bites down so hard on her lip that she tastes blood between her teeth. Carver would have scoffed or carried their sister away to sober up; she just stands here, watching.

"I'll see that you both get home when she's finished," Varric promises. "Don't worry, Sunshine."

"I'm not worried." She looks away as her sister shifts position so that she's leaning her forehead against Anders' chest, his hands look endlessly gentle around her shoulders as he tries to move her upright. He looks at her in a way that makes Bethany feel hollow. "It's been exactly a year, today."

"I know," Varric says, and his voice is so gentle she wants to cry.

 

* * *

  
  
**4**.

Kirkwall greets them with rain and Qunari attackers.

Because she knows the city, Stroud lets her make the decisions and at first the instructions – orders are made up of harder words, spoken with more confidence; she can tell the difference between a lot of things now – feel foreign in her mouth.

She learns quickly, though. Always has.

"Hello, sister. How fitting we should meet here."

Marian - surrounded by her friends, wrapped up in their care and loyalty - looks wounded at the neutral tone and Bethany regrets it, briefly, but her heart beats hard and heavy in her chest and Kirkwall is a broken promise of  _home_.

"Are you hurt?" Her sister is as consistent as the life she leads. Big sister Marian, hard knuckles and a big heart. Never alone.

Bethany shakes her head, looks over at the other Wardens but they all move about, seemingly fine.

Her sister takes a step closer and tilts her head, the way she does when she wants to ask something of someone or make you do things against your will.  _Please, just once. For me._  They were raised as nobody, more commoners than anything else, but Marian has all the makings of a noblewoman passing through the fancy halls of Hightown's estates. Soft, smiling, tough as white steel.

Suddenly it's hard to breathe.

"Stroud, we need to move." She says it quickly, as soon as he's close enough to hear; there's a cut across his cheek but it barely bleeds. The healing magic in her palm sparks to life unbidden anyway but neither of them pretend to notice. "We've already delayed too long."

"Very true." He inclines his head and she's so grateful for it, for  _him_ , for their unmentionable mission in places far from anything she would think to call home.

" _Bethany_."

She had hated Marian down there in the Deep Roads, too. Hated her as Stroud's face came closer, as the disgusting liquid trickled down her throat, hated her for her easy laughter and easy tears, for her sharp mind and strong hands and for being everything Bethany couldn't be.  
  
"Maker watch over you, my friend," Stroud says in her place.

  
*  
*  
*  
  
  
"I'm so very tired of running, Marian."

They're knee-deep in mud, both of them still children in their hearts and bones and Bethany's magic occasionally make her laugh, slipping out of her body like peculiar acts of someone else's will.

Her sister looks at her then, her face lit up by a reassuring smile. "One day we will stop, Bethany. Turn and face the tiger."  
  


* * *

  
  
  
**5**.

Right outside Kirkwall they have a run-in with a saarebas and loose three Wardens to the ensuing battle.

Stroud strikes the final blow with blood pumping out of a deep wound, cursing their delay and Kirkwall alike, his hands curled into fists as the pain numbs him to everything else.

When he comes to his senses again his chest is bare and Bethany tends to a wound on his forearm with a serious expression on her face, a flicker of worry behind the green eyes.

"It's poisoned," she informs him. Her thumb presses down gently on top of the bandages she's wrapped around it. "I've done what I can. We need to find better antidotes in Starkhaven tomorrow."

Stroud nods, eager to put his tunic on again. The night air is crisp and chilly. "I have been injured worse than this, don't worry."

Something passes in her gaze then but she says nothing.

That night he sinks deep into a fever and feels like he can't open his eyes, as though something is forcing them shut. Inside his head there are a thousand separate songs, a thousand screams and cries, a Blight reserved just for him. He dreams of pyres and wakes up screaming, except he does not wake up and the screams remain locked up inside him.

It's not until the light of dawn finds him that he realises Bethany sleeps beside him on the ground with her arms wrapped tight around his chest. Her head rests on his uninjured side; he can feel her breaths like hot, damp puffs.

  
*  
*  
*  
  
  
The first night in their uncle's house, Bethany cries herself to sleep. It's something a child would do but her childhood has been ripped out of her lately and every step back towards it feels like a way to patch it up.

_Oh, Carver. Oh, please forgive me._

When the fire has gone out and the room feels no warmer than sleeping under the starry sky, she feels Marian's arms slide around her body in the narrow bed, her feet slipping between Bethany's calves, just like when they were children.


	3. Calling

  
  
**9:35 Dragon**  
  
 _"If the centre holds, who cares what else gets trapped?"_  
Larius, Legacy DLC/DA2  
  
\----

  
  
  
  
“I hear you are the one who recruited Malcolm Hawke's daughter.”   
  
Janeka notices a painting right above Stroud's desk in his chambers: three joyless Wardens staring down at her. Incredibly apt choice. Even the air in here is stale, full of submission, of orders swallowed and never questioned.   
  
“Janeka,” Stroud replies, his voice deep and neutral. “How do you keep track of everything?”   
  
“A talent of mine.”  
  
He nods for her to take a seat but she declines, preferring to remain standing even if the advantage in position is symbolic rather than strategic. Even if it's mostly in her own head. Damn these pompous Senior Wardens always one step ahead of her; Janeka has devoted most of her life to training and research – as has Stroud but he has more battles to his record, more causes won and less time wasted.   
  
_The Grey Wardens has no room for that kind of ambition_ someone echoes in her head. Suffocating a sneer she folds her arms across her chest.   
  
_You are becoming quite bitter, child._  
  
“I need her for my expedition to the Vimmark Mountains,” she states bluntly. It's the best approach with Stroud, she knows him well by now. An upholder of many rigid structures and honours, the incessant Warden honour that can make Janeka's throat tighten with frustration.   
  
Stroud barely looks at her, his gaze fastened on the parchments on his desk.   
  
“That I cannot allow.”  
  
“And the reason?”  
  
“No.” He says it simply but his arrogance breaks through. Once, they went through the Joining together, side by side. He had been young then and terrified – she hadn't said a thing as she fell to her knees on the ground, Stroud had been on all fours crying and been taunted mercilessly by the younger Wardens afterwards. Janeka hadn't done a thing to stop them then; she feels satisfied about it now. “We do not bring new recruits with us to our Long Walks.”   
  
The Long Walk. She refrains from pointing out that he knows nothing of her calling or lack thereof, that he ought to be preparing for the same thing if that is what he truly believes will happen to them, when the song increases in their heads. All the rituals created by man, all the fear and obedience. You think you outrun it when you leave Andraste behind but instead you leap right into the arms of another faith, another purpose forging blades out of human souls.   
  
On her way out she can almost swear that the wardens in the painting are sneering at her.   
  
  
  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
  
  
To most of the citizens in Wycome, the two Wardens living by the lake aren't anything remarkable at all. Yesterday's news, nothing new under the hot sun; Elissa has heard them mention it down by the marketplace from time to time. _Them Wardens, private people. Never bother us and always give plenty of coin.  
  
_ Today she pays for the salted meat and the fish and nods at a half-familiar face passing by on the street. They have been here since Firstfall now, almost a full year, and Elissa feels the ground solid and warm beneath her feet and the salty smell of water thinking it can be home, thinking it's close enough.   
  
A small hut became theirs when Loghain had found the owner drowned, a few steps away from his fishing boat. Then later a spot of land right outside, a small garden where they grow potatoes and herbs as though they are people who do that sort of thing. Here, at least for the time being, it is simpler to pretend. No titles to their names here, no expectations to their faces. They scout for trouble in the city outskirts and in return the city leaves them be to fend off the unwelcome visitors and the rabbits that eat their crop.   
  
It's a freedom, living without a realm. For him in particular, Elissa thinks at times when she spots a stray smile on his face or catches him looking entirely content with some mundane chore. It's a freedom, perhaps, because they both know it won't last much longer.   
  
Loghain is outdoors when she arrives, down by the potato plants, his sleeves rolled up in the heat. It's an amusing sight, still rare enough for her to smile to herself every time she sees it because even if the rest of Thedas forgets quickly, she does not. The hero of River Dane weeding out wild flowers and thistles, scowling at the potatoes to grow faster.   
  
When he spots her on the road leading up to their home he offers one of those brief smiles that he reserves for her and for this life. Elissa slumps down beside him.   
  
“No letters today?”  
  
He shakes his head, looking at the wrapped-up food in her arms. The _hunger_ , she thinks, the hunger is one of those things they cannot outrun.   
  
“If we haven't heard from Weisshaupt by the end of this month, we ought to travel there ourselves.”   
  
The sun is heavy above them, the ground hot with lingering summer heat but her words come out as chills, jolts of ice that prick and pierce. When they left Amaranthine the Order had seemed to hold up, every breach at least temporarily breached yet now everything they hear again speaks of the opposite. It's like a sodding Landsmeet with darkspawn, she had cursed once and she still recalls the taste of that insight in her mouth, its anger and frustration.   
  
Travelling to the heart of the Grey Warden power, however, is not something that is easily done nor something she wishes to undertake unless they have good reason.   
  
She is beginning to think that they do.   
  
“Yes,” Loghain agrees.   
  
There is so little knowledge, so few facts. Even after years of gathering them like a madwoman, of demanding journals and tomes and records kept Elissa knows next to nothing about what the centre holds. And it's the centre of the storm that matters.   
  
Alistair had told her everything he knew of grey wardens, Wynne had offered a different perspective but all of it - from his wide-eyed adoration to her historical excursions - rings untrue in the light of recent events. Or if not untrue so at least not fit to be the only truth, not the sole foundation for what they are. No military order can be built on anything but sacrifice and blood and she doesn't find enough of it in the old tales of griffons and honour. Secrets are kept for a reason and she wants to know the Wardens' reasons. _I can not be expected to follow commands with my eyes closed._

_You resemble her more for every day_ , Avernus remarks in her mind, in a recent memory from their visit to the Keep. She came to ask him about the darkspawn song in her blood, about how it's fallen more silent, almost left her entirely but he had refused to answer blunt questions this time, only given approximations and assumptions and wished to discuss his own research.  _Even my time will end soon enough, Commander._

She wonders if she will miss him; she wonders who will be there to miss them when they've written themselves out of the history books.   
  
She wonders about the road to Weisshaupt.   
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
Daylight again. It has been so long.   
  
Janeka sits down on a fallen tree right outside the entrance to the Deep Roads, allowing the dim rays that break through the clouds above to warm her face and shoulders.   
_  
_Even if she knew about the Warden prison and has known for a very long time it had been a peculiar sensation to descend into it, to sink down into the pits of her own inglorious order and its darkest hours. The lack of light alone, it twists your senses. _I seek the light!_ What else had they wanted to keep imprisoned down there, she wonders, what else had roamed the endless stone corridors and dead-end routes? _  
_  
Janeka closes her eyes and tilts her head back. The sun isn't warm but her skin feels unused to it all the same, feels scorched underneath the open sky.  
  
All the rituals created by man, all the fear and obedience.   
  
She sees it differently now.   
  
She sees it _very_ differently.   
  


 


	4. Storm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this right after my first playthrough of DA2, once upon a time. Didn't know what to do with it before, but now I decided it could fit this little collection-story.

 

**  
9:37 Dragon**

* * *

 

 

 

Kirkwall stinks of fire and flesh.

For days, ashes and pebbles rain from the sky and Hawke thinks of the old mournful stories the sisters in the chantry used to tell her when she was a girl. She had not liked going there, always found a way to escape but she had displayed a knack for remembering the grimmest, most horrifying tales while she never learned the details of Andraste's battles. It seems fitting now.

“You have a few days at most,” Aveline says as they pass the littered courtyard outside.

“I know.” Hawke steps over something she decides is a corpse, grinding her teeth. “Varric and Isabela are working on it.”

It's the deal, at any rate, and for all her grand magic revolution now set in motion, she has never been good at making supplies and gold magically appear so she sorely hopes they fulfil their end of the bargain. Her own job is to wade through the destruction to pick up the pieces they left behind, say their goodbyes. To press her condolences into the pebbles and stones around them, imprint her regret.

“This storm was upon us already.” Aveline suddenly puts a hand on Hawke's shoulder and gives it a squeeze, like she would do for any of her guardsmen in need of it, only this is a deep-rooted motion between them born from years of friendship and shared burdens. The difference is small but significant and it lands in Hawke, spreads like a warmth. “Don't think otherwise.”

A woman with two children in tow nods at them as she hurries along. Two templars discuss something at the bottom of the stairs that leads to the Hightown mansions. Further ahead, there's a merchant trying to set up shop in the ruins. It may seem futile but that's Kirkwall, Hawke knows and a shiver of homesickness runs through her despite still being here. _Kirkwall_. The city that survives the way it always survives: by soaking up the damage and injustice and the floods of refugees who are too poor to mind. It's a city built on fear and slaves, built for _slavers_ ; the blood and death of the city's heritage makes this war seem like nothing. And she thinks about Ostagar, about Lothering, about _running. W_ ar had been alien to her back then, had seemed so frightful and impossible to navigate through as they stumbled their way across and around it. These days, she reads it like a native tongue.

“I think we helped a little, though.” She attempts a sarcastic smile. “Tipped the scales.”

“You certainly did, Hawke. But then you always do. One way or another.”

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

They live on borrowed time in Fenris's mansion, but at least they live.  
  
“Are you angry?” Fenris places a plate of bread and meat in front of them on the table, returns with two bottles of wine. Something in her chest swells at the domestic gestures. It has been a long time since anyone took care of her. Odd that he, of all the people she has associated with over these past years, should be around to deal with the aftermath of it all. He has never seemed the type, barely fits the description even now as he sits here with her, watching her intently.

“I'm sad,” she says, and it's the first time she admits it to anyone. “I'm actually very _sad_.”  
  
He looks at her. “That is understandable.”

Hawke shakes her head, trying to shake off the confusion. Is it understandable? She doesn't know if she agrees at this point, doesn't know if anything here is worth understanding. Blighted Kirkwall. This city is like a curse, a wound that refuses to heal: the veil is torn here, Anders had told her once as they were pursuing some hopeless mage cause along the Wounded Coast, had spoken of the contortion of its structure, of something  _unbound_ underneath. She can't help but think now in retrospect, that he had been making excuses already and perhaps that is entirely unfair but then again, so is he.

_No_ . Frowning, she forces her mind away from that trail of thought.

The wine loosens some of the tightness in her body; Hawke drinks her first glass without any accompanying food, downs it like water. The room instantly feels warmer as the spirits burn her throat dry. She thinks she would like to talk. That this is what people do in her place.

“What about the mage?” Fenris asks suddenly, when she has almost forgotten she's not the only person in the room. She wishes he would use Anders's name. Even now she wishes it, furiously, because names have power and there is no point _denying_ it.

“I'm sad for him as well,” she says, realising it's true.

Fenris scoffs, helping himself to more wine. The unspoken _why_ hangs in the air between them.

Biting down on her lower lip, she thinks of how desperately she does not want to hear this question again. But Fenris, she knows, refuses to understand pity and has no respect to spare for other people's mistakes. No. That is not entirely true, of course. She urges herself to remember fire and smoke and betrayal and then his verdict: _I will not abandon you._ It grates, somehow, his willingness to overlook principles for her alone. As though his loyalty means less that way, as though it lives and dies with their personal affairs.

“Do you think he deserves your mercy?”

“No, Fenris.” Hawke bites back a growl. “ _Don't_.”

Fenris seems to consider saying something anyway, but then he merely nods and they are silent again.  
  
  


 

 

*

 

 

 

“You're not responsible for his mess, Hawke.” Isabela murmurs against the back of Hawke's head, her breathing slowing down but her body still warm. Like the fire that continues to burn in the fireplace.

They keep watch through the nights, take turns sleeping and never let their eyes off the doors and windows in the mansion. It's a form of life that comes alarmingly easy, even now. As though Kirkwall has only been a brief moment in the Fade, these years of noble parties and Hightown habits existing merely as figments of their shared imagination.

Hawke's eyes sting with tiredness; she takes one of Isabela's hands in her own, tangling their fingers on the sheet.   
  
“What am I responsible for then?” she asks, even if she isn't certain she would like an answer.   
  
“This.” Isabela lets her free hand trace a path from Hawke's ribs – where a fresh injury still hurts in a vague, unsettling kind of way – down to the slight swell of her stomach and further down, her fingertips like drops of water, trickling soft and slow.

When she turns her head Isabela's mouth is there, too, and Hawke kisses her with a hunger burning hotter than grief.   
  
  


*

 

 

 

Since time is running out, Hawke works hard at keeping its frenetic pace.

She sees Varric in Lowtown, a brief meeting between shoving in more supplies in already-full sacks and hiding said sacks in his room at The Hanged Man. Abandoned warehouses are few and far between these days what with most of them substituting as mortuaries and, as Isabela points out, they _definitely_ want to avoid ending up with stray body parts in their cargo.

“So,” Hawke asks as she hauls a heavy crate on top of other crates wondering how in the Maker's name they'll find room for it all. “What about the ending? Didn't you always say it's not a good story unless the hero dies?”

“That wasn't your story, Hawke” Varric gives her a sidelong glance. “That was Blondie's. Yours is a different kind altogether.”

She shakes her head; Varric continues his work. Neither of them points out that Anders isn't dead. Or that perhaps he ought to be. Or that _she_ never asked to be the judge of that. What mad world demands that anyone should be their friend's hangman?

“Maybe you'll find yourself a better hero on our travels.” She rubs her forehead with the back of her hand. Her own skin feels sticky and too-hot. The smell of iron and dust clings to them all, resists the most fervent scrubs. “A proper one, even.”

Varric looks at her for a few seconds, puzzling, as though he is trying to measure something. Scales, she thinks. She always thinks of scales.

“Or maybe I just stick around you for a bit,” he says then, his voice the softest shade of reassuring.

 

 

*

 

 

They board their new home in utter silence, a variety of injuries, of _hurt_. Behind them Kirkwall is waking up and shaking off the dead weight of the night.

“The first rule of the ship is that nobody throws any fireballs in it,” Isabela declares, hands on hips, nodding towards Bethany and Merrill who meet the covert accusation with innocent smiles.

“I'd _never_.”

“Oh, no.” Merrill shakes her head, earnest. “Never.”

As they leave the docks, Hawke takes in the sight of the ship, all wood and metal and... other things that ships are made of, she supposes. It looks _sturdy_. Isabela would probably have her head for using such crude words to describe it but there it is. Sturdy: like it can harbour them all. At least the handful of them that are dragging themselves out of the city in this cold morning light, the spares and beggars of the lot.

She will miss Aveline. She already does; standing here, further away from it for every second, Hawke finds that she is picturing Aveline in the ruins of their city, a last outpost between the citizens and the chaos: _you will go through me first._ Her stomach lurches. She misses Hightown, as well, misses its streets and people and bustle. The lingering summer evenings in the courtyards when the stone grows hot and the chalky scent of it fills the air. The carefully measured paths between her house and everything she could possibly need and a lot of things she doesn't. The endless noise, the crowds, the stench.

Kirkwall, for all its chains and oppressive misery, had been a purpose.

They have no plans now. _Leave_ has been the first step in anything they have managed to come up with and now that this is accomplished, _lie_ _low_ seems to be next on their scant list of scratched-out words. In the past few days, Isabela has suggested Rivain more than once and Varric has spoken of keeping to the cities along the coastline. Fenris's suggestion is hiding in plain sight in Orlais where the usual trouble will make what they have in tow seem all but reasonable in comparison. Hiding from a war, Hawke thinks, groaning to herself. She has made better plans in her life. Worse, too, come to think of it. Lately, she has forged plans from decisions so faint they seem like gasps, conjured up from nothing more substantial than air.

And today, with the fresh air and the salty scent of water washing out the stains of their old lives, she tries momentarily to shrug off the weight of the world and offer it to Isabella.

“You're the captain,” she says, when the two of them are alone. “ _You_ set the course.”

But the captain of the ship shakes her head, almost apologetically. “Oh sweetness, it doesn't work like that. Not this time.”

“Of course it doesn't,” Hawke concedes with a sigh. “And this is why we will most likely end up in Orlais, accidentally having the Empress killed or something similar.”

Isabella chuckles. “But we won't be bored.”  
  
They stand shoulder to shoulder, looking out over the seemingly endless water ahead.

“Being hunted by fifty thousand chevaliers is not exactly an _entertaining_ thought.”   
  
“I've always preferred to have the odds against me, Hawke. More fun that way.”

Hawke glances sideways at the other woman, taller and stronger and immovable like nothing else in their lives right now. For all her expertise on running away, Isabela has proven as sturdy as the ship they're aboard. Now Hawke feels her arm come around her waist and she rests her head against Isabela's as the fog and the chilly morning air opens up slightly for them, allowing them to be swallowed.

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
